From
Superintendent James Wingate Johnston (the ships surgeon) Journal we
know that the convict
guard embarked on the 15th
April at Deptford.On the 17th April at Woolwich the first
batch of 160 convicts were taken on board, eighty convicts each from
the prison hulks Warrior and Justitia both moored at Woolwich. From
the reaches at Woolwich the ASIA 1(5) proceeded down the river Thames
past Tilbury, and into the Thames estuary. She then docked at
Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey situated off the north coast of
Kent.

The official Tasmanian prison
records state that all the convicts embarked on the 17th
April 1840. This is not true as On the 21st
April, 116 additional prisoners (including Austin) were brought up
from the hulk Fortitude at Chatham by government cutter, and loaded
on board. The actual departure date from Sheerness is recorded in
Charles Bateson definitive book “The Convict Ships”. He
states that the actual departure date for the ASIA 1(5) from
Sheerness was the 27th April 1840.The ten
day delay in sailing may be due in part to the bad state of health
that the 116 prisoners from the Fortitude were in. Wingate Johnson’s
journal records “At
Sheerness on the 21st
of April, received on board one hundred and sixteenmale prisoners from
Fortitude hulk at Chatham making a total of two hundred and seventy
six. The latter prisoners were by no means in the same healthy
condition as those received from the Warrior and Justitia. It was
with great difficulty that one hundred and sixteen could be released
for embarkation”.

Combining Bateson’s
information with surgeon Wingate Johnson’s journal we can plot
the movements of the ASIA 1(5):

The Java is
chartered to take troops of the 65th Regiment from Sydney to the Bay
of Islands, Auckland and Port Nicholson. After wards she proceeds to
Hobart Town, taking the remainder of the 51st Regiment from thence to
Swan River on her way to Calcutta.